I’m often to be found underground – in Scarborough, Rotherham, Stockport, and Milton Keynes.
Here I am in this instance on Tyneside exploring the labyrinthine netherworlds.
Underpasses – Newcastle upon Tyne
Bathing Pool – Tynemouth
I had cycled by on a journey from Newcastle to Amble.
I returned to take a closer look.
The pool fell into disrepair, and in the mid 90s the Local Authority demolished the ancillary buildings and bulldozed the rubble into the pool, at a cost of £200,000, before filling with concrete and imported boulders to form an artificial ‘rock pool’.
The anticipated marine life they introduced never flourished and the pool remains an eyesore to this day.
Friends of Tynemouth Pool
There are plans for restoration and renewal.
So that once again the merry bathers may bathe merrily.
There’s still a long way to go.
Concrete Toon
Everything is up in the air.
Tyneside is self evidently enamoured of elevation – they simply adore bridges, having five and another one as well.  Walking driving, running trains across the mighty Tyne Valley, why they even write songs about them.
In the Swinging Sixties T Dan Smith vowed to create a Brasilia of the North, which as good as his word he did, though sadly lacking the requisite regard for the law of the land.
What remains is a complex interwoven structure of urban motorways, walkways, multi-storey car parks and tower blocks. To explore is to enter a world of the sublime, exhilarating and still yet mildly confusing.
Can you get there from here?
